How extreme is poverty in Medway?

In which Steven returns to writing a column but finds that the jokes fail him.

The Sustainable Development Goals are designed to promote prosperity for people and the planet. Created in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly as part of a global development framework emphasising the interconnected system between society, the environment, and the economy, with sustainability at its core. As the saying goes, all politics is local, so how is Medway doing when it comes to achieving these goals? Most targets are to be achieved by 2030, and as we have passed the halfway mark, it seemed a good time to investigate them and find out.

Sustainable Development Goal #1

The first goal is for the eradication of poverty in all forms through:

• Shared prosperity

• A basic standard of living

• Social protection for people everywhere

• Access to economic and natural resources.

The goals are broken down into a series of targets.

Goal 1.1 is ‘by 2030, eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere, currently measured as people living on less than $1.25 a day.’

This is tracked through a series of indicators. 1.1 is the ‘proportion of the population living below the international poverty line by sex, age, employment status and geographical location (urban/rural).’

So, let’s investigate and see if we know how many people in Medway could be living below the international poverty line.

In 2015, 800 million people in the world were living in extreme poverty. Since then, global poverty reduction has been slowing down and this was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Reversing three decades of progress, this decade has seen the number of people living in extreme poverty increase for the first time in a generation, with 70 million people pushed back into extreme poverty. Global recovery from the pandemic has been uneven due to multiple socioeconomic, geopolitical and climate emergencies. Nowcasting suggests that 8.4% of the world population could still be living in extreme poverty and that by 2030 the figure will have dropped by less than 30% since 2015.

What does this mean for the UK and for Medway?